ASSIGNMENT TWO
CRITICAL REVIEW AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
RADIANCE
LOUISA DAVIN
PART ONE: FILM INFORMATION
DIRECTOR: Rachel Perkins
Active within the creation of film and television works for a period spanning the past twelve years, Rachel Perkins is of particular significance to the Australian cinematic industry in that she is the second of only two female Aboriginal directors to gain theatrical release for their product, the first being Tracey Moffatt's 1993 feature - beDevil (bonza rmit film research, 1998).
Perkins' initial employment with the Aboriginal owned Imparja Television enabled the development of her production skills, delivering 'indigenous language and current affairs programming' to Alice Springs and the region of her derivation' the Central Desert (bonza rmit film research, 1998).
1991 saw Perkins' move to Sydney to take up the position of Executive Producer for SBS Television's Aboriginal Television unit. This provided the basis for her production of Blood Brothers, a series of four one hour documentaries, exploring issues in relation to her father's political activism (Charlie Perkins), the Fire Ceremony, the music of Kev Carmody and the conviction of Max Stuart (bonza rmit film research, 1998).
Blackfella Films, Perkins' own production company, was formed in 1993 and - as the name suggests - had an indigenous focus, producing several Aboriginal works, including Spirit to Spirit (Perkins, 1993), multi-media installations and a series of corporate productions for Qantas (bonza rmit film research, 1998).
Following her scholarship to the AFTRS (Australian Film, Television and Radio School) in 1995, Perkins gained additional directorial and production experience via a short film for Channel Four Films and consultancy on the Sand to Celluloid project. Perkins' services were then attained by the ABC, commencing the role of Executive Producer of the Aboriginal Programming Unit in 1996. Her most notable works of this era including the Indigenous music program Songlines and the development of the National Indigenous Documentary Fund.
1998 marked Perkins' debut as a feature director with the production and subsequent cinematic release of Radiance.
SCRIPTWRITER: Louis Nowra
Born in Melbourne, Victoria, Nowra studied English at La Trobe University. He did not complete his degree, however Nowra's success as a writer indicates that this held few implications in terms of career. Nowra has created operas, novels, short stories, film scripts and radio plays although he is best known for his varied theatrical works with an emphasis on issues of Aboriginal displacement. Radiance was Nowra's 28th play, written specifically for actresses Lydia Miller, Rachael Maza and Rhoda Roberts who played Cressy, Mae and Nona in the original production performed by the Belvoir Street Theatre in September 1993.
Nowra reworked Radiance for the purpose of Perkins' cinematic production having previously adapted his work of 1992 Cosi under similar circumstances for Mark Joffe's release of 1995. Cinematically Radiance provided Nowra with budgetary restrictions which while limiting the scope of his reworking, maintained the centrality of the character's interrelations in the text's translation from play to screen text.
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Warwick Thornton (Radiance marked his feature film debut)
PRODUCERS: Ned Lander and Andy Myer
PRODUCTION COMPANY: Eclipse Films
DISTRIBUTOR: Polygram Filmed Entertainment (Australian Distributor)
Beyond Films (International Distributor)
EDITOR: James Bradley
PRODUCTION DESIGN: Sarah Stollman
COSTUME DESIGN: Tess Schofield
MUSIC: Alistair Jones
CAST: Cressy - Rachael Maza
Maza may also be seen in Fistful of Flies (dir. Monica Pellizzari) and the ABC's television production of 1997 Heartland.
Nona - Deborah Mailman
A graduate of QUT's Academy of the Arts, Mailman worked for the La Boite Theatre Company and aided in the founding of Kooemba Jdarra 'the first indigenous theatre company of Queensland. She won the AFI's best actress award of 1998 for her performance in Radiance and was praised by QUT's head of Acting, Dianne Eden, stating that 'Her personal energy reaches out to the audience who fall in love with her'(Academy of the Arts News, 1998: 1).
Mae - Trisha Morton-Thomas
A member of the Griffin Theatre company, Morton-Thomas may be seen in their production of State of Shock (Tony Strachan) based on the real life trial of Alwyn Peter for the stabbing of his girlfriend.
PRODUCTION YEAR: 1998
RELEASE DATE: Thursday 8 October 1998
Financed by the AFI, SBS Independent, the NSW Film and Television Office, the Premium Movie Partnership and private investors, Radiance was released as part of the 1998 Melbourne International Film Festival. Reviews of the film additionally reveal its screening at the Toronto and Hamptons film festivals - though information regarding these releases is not well documented.
AUSTRALIAN BOX OFFICE TOTAL: $218 797
AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION:
As a person only recently acquainted with the technological wonder that is the internet I found the gaining of knowledge regarding the film Radiance to be best described as a challenge. Initial topic searches were fruitless and it appeared that this film, which had generated so much discussion subsequent to Deborah Mailman's AFI Award winning performance, had simply strayed from the information highway. Delving more deeply however, via an exploration of the Australian News Network (The Arts and Entertainment), Bzine Entertainment, bonza rmit film research, Imovie and the Movie Review Query Engine I discovered a variety of reviews, plot synopsis and director profiles. Information on the actors themselves proved a little more elusive as did comprehensive notes on Louis Nowra. The good old fashioned library was much more useful in the latter instance providing interviews in back issues of Cinema Papers, copies of the play and two publications on both Nowra's plays and his life.
PART TWO: CRITICAL REVIEW
Pending a superficial sweep over the exterior of Radiance it seems it could indeed be catalogued with the ample variety of melodramatic studies of sisterly relationships - the parties brought together by the death of a family member - circulating within the international cinematic resource. Yet this low budget release conforms to such ideals no more than to use them as a veneer under which is housed a complex exploration of the constructions of identity from given circumstances and fictional histories.
Radiance is the story of three 'sisters' who reunite at the time of their mother's funeral only to discover that the agonies of their past did not die with their mother but have rather become intrinsically interwoven into their perceptions of self.
The audience are firstly introduced to the middle sister Mae, flicking lit matches across the blackened screen whilst chanting to the spirit of her mother:
"Ghosts burn, did you know that? And you'll burn. It'll all burn down, even ghosts can't live in a place that doesn't exist any more."
Perkins' dissection of Nowra's opening monologue initiates within the narrative structure a series of parallelisms that become defined as the film develops and more information is revealed. Two important motifs are established here however, in the presence of flames and the instantly detectable bitterness Mae harbours towards her only known parent. These establishing shots are juxtaposed against those of youngest sister Nona, wandering aimlessly throughout the city - exposing to the audience her pregnancy via a home test administered crudely in a train station toilet. Nona attempts to contact her mother by phone only to reach Mae and thus discover her death. The title credits splinter the narrative at this point, Perkins having revealed the motivation for the sisters' reunion.
Nona dons a wig (an interesting device utilized by the character to remove herself from the confines placed upon her expression of personality by reality) and trucks home, her arrival triggering an almost instant disruption of Mae's peace - left suddenly alone after years of nursing their mother through the extremities of premature senility. To the sisters' surprise their oldest sibling, Cressy, appears on the doorstep the following morning with the intention of attending the funeral and then catching a connecting flight to Sydney. She has achieved international success as an opera singer and is an aloof presence within the run-down home. At this point the realization may be formulated that Perkins utilises the physicality of her characters to exemplify their difference and build upon the tension mounting within the text's environmental restrictions. Action is predominantly confined to the areas of home and car (indicative of the film's stage orientation) however, the film's coastal Queensland setting enters the narrative, performing a function greater than that of a 'container for human events' (Bordwell and Thompson, 1997: 172). The environment becomes the enforcer of the sisters' isolation, and a distant island, to which Nona wants to travel in order to scatter their mother's ashes, becomes symbolic of a seemingly intangible heritage.
The scene of the funeral service itself provides a rare occasion within the film for the conscious juxtaposition of Aboriginal vs the hegemonic white culture. The fact that the women are indeed Aboriginal is never a matter of dialogue between the sisters. As stated by Nowra:
That they are Aborigines is never mentioned, because, like any group of people who are Aboriginal, they don't sit around discussing their own identity' (Smith, 1998: 57).
The issues central to their lives as Aboriginal women are thus naturalized within the film text as intrinsic to the plot. Father Doyle's exaggerated eulogy regarding the faults of being 'human' acting as a link to historically located supremacist attitudes.
Following a purposeful toilet stop by Nona en-route to the airstrip, Cressy misses her flight and the three are forced to inhabit their old family home until the arrival of the next flight. The home itself becomes a pivotal device within this - the bulk of the narrative. The sisters, made strangers by age difference and the absence of Cressy and Mae, after their removal from their mother by government officials, are both bonded and polarized by their shared memories or understanding of each other's experiences under its roof.
Cressy is revealed as bitter towards both their mother and Nona for her forced removal from the home. She is resentful of their mother's lack of communication with her following these actions and of Nona for remaining with her. Cressy's reference to her mother's claims that her ancestors were calling from the island, telling her not to leave in pursuit of a career in her later adulthood - align the audience with concepts of cultural displacement - symptomatic of the stolen generation. She additionally bares a sinewy neck - hard to the touch - a physical manifestation of the pains she has taken to both gain and endure her career path.
Mae suffers under the belief that their mother hated her and that despite her senility she was disappointed that it was not Nona or Cressy who returned to care for her. She sat quietly while young boys threw rocks at their roof - calling her mother a witch. It is later revealed that Mae grew to share this opinion - a result of her mother's public antics (spitting and abusing people in the street) and her own abuse.
Nona exists in a state of delusion concerning her father - believing him to be the 'Black Prince' - the one true love of her mother's life, a dark and handsome rodeo rider. She is continually searching for signs of his past presence within the home and is persistent in her ignorance towards her sister's obviously negative and secretive responses. Nona continually aligns her personality traits with those of her mother (including her sexual promiscuity) and shadows her sister's actions (eg: Cressy's habit of toying with the chain about her neck). She is erratic and overtly sexual in her nature - an aspect she emphasises to get a rise out of Mae.
There is a double climax to the film, the first being Mae's eventual emotional breakdown as the result of her sisters' complaisance regarding the true condition of their mother. In a teary rage she expresses her grief at her mother's lack of affection and eventual madness to almost unbearable extents. A parallel is drawn between this and the opening sequences when Mae reveals her plan to burn down the family home, repossessed by the original owner (a vindictive ex-lover of their mother, using the house to keep her quiet until the time of her death) in an act of revenge and absolution. Mae and Cressy collude to undertake the act.
The second climax comes with the house already in flames. Breaking at Nona's continual reference to the 'Black Prince,' Cressy exposes the truth of Nona's existence. She is in fact the daughter of Cressy, who was raped by one of her mother's boyfriends under the house at age twelve. Unable to accept such realities, Nona flees to the distant island to scatter the ashes of the woman she always believed to be her mother. Returning the following morning she is reunited with her sisters - the three escaping not only the scene of the burnt house but the grasp of a past which has haunted and hindered them throughout their existence.
Critically it seems that Radiance was almost universally well received. Evan Williams of The Australian newspaper praised the film as 'bold and impressive,' commending Perkins' deliverance of 'cathartic exhilaration' to the film's emotive climatic scenes (1998). He additionally comments on Warwick Thornton's contribution to the warmth of the film via the nature of his photography and the way in which Alistair Jones manipulated the film's musical score to characterize meaning (Williams, 1998). Operatic extracts are juxtaposed against tribal based songs to focus the melodrama and recognize cultural bearings. Greg King of Melbourne touted the film as 'beautiful and insightful,' a 'strong and profoundly moving human drama' (1998). A Toronto Sun reviewer 'Bruce Kirkland' introduced the notion of Perkins' creation of characters that while archetypal avoid cliche, noting the result as a film with a 'kind of shimmering Radiance' (1998). Margaret Pomeranz of SBS's The Movie Show, applauds the performance of the film's actors - enabling her to experience an 'emotional connection to the story' (1998).
The only fiercely negative review of Radiance I could locate was that of Milan Zubic and Richard Phillips in the World Socialist Web Site - labelled 'Unhelpful Praise for an Imperfect Film' (1998). Here the reviewers are of the opinion that Perkins has 'been unable to translate the deep-rooted anger of the play to the screen' (Zubic and Phillips, 1998). The reviewers also state:
Extravagant compliments however, are no substitute for insightful and honest criticism. More of the latter is needed to create the intellectual and artistic atmosphere required before deeply engaging films are produced on this subject in Australia (Zubic and Phillips, 1998).
In terms of my own appreciation of the film, I found it to be both entertaining and sincerely emotional without developing watery stereotypes. I agree however, with the comments made by the majority of the reviewers regarding the film's cinematic restriction as a result of its inability to complete the translation from stage to screen. The settings are obviously restricted by this, as is the use of other incidental characters - needed to further develop the sisters' situation within the community. I felt that the operatic extracts were perhaps on occasion too obviously contrasted with the rest of the film's soundtrack, which somewhat falsified the melodramatic elements alluded to by the music. Otherwise the film was extremely enjoyable, its actors embodying their characters as much with their physicality as with their expression. I do not concur with the opinions of Zubic and Phillips which suggest the film is lacking a sense of gravity in its exploration of the central issues (1998). I believe in the instance of Radiance, the film's conformity to O'Regan's notions of the medium-sized English-language cinema (he argues that a similarity yet difference between the Australian cinema and that of Hollywood must exist) operates to position the film in terms of it melodramatic genre and then extenuate the devices of this genre in a way that creates a complexity of inter-character relation, yielding tension and depth in the cinematic text (1996: 96). Radiance, while maintaining recognition of the quirkiness so often associated with Australian cinema, does not rely on such a strategy to orientate itself within the national cinema. The film presents, rather, an intrinsic Australianness to the cinematic text, thus delivering forth its issues from those confined to concepts of cultural orientation - as its characters scrutinise the basis of their own construction within their individual scope of existence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Books:
Bordwell, David, Thompson, Kristin, 1997, Film Art: An Introduction, fifth edition, McGraw Hill, International
Kelly, Veronica, 1987, Australian Playwrights: Louis Nowra, Rodopi, Amsterdam
Kelly, Veronica, 1998, The Theatre of Louis Nowra, Currency Press, Sydney
Langton, Marcia, 1993, 'Well, I heard it on the radio and I saw it on the television': An Essay for the Australian Film Commission on the politics and aesthetics of filmmaking by and about Aboriginal people and things, Australian Film Commission, Australia
Nowra, Louis, 1993, Radiance, Currency Press, Sydney
O'Regan, Tom, 1996, Australian National Cinema, Routledge, London, USA, Canada
On-Line:
Bonza rmit film research
King, Greg, 1998, Radiance: A Film Review by Greg (Roy) King of Melbourne Australia, http://www.netau.com.au/gregking/f659rad.htm
Kirkland, Bruce, 1999, Saga goes from grit to Radiance, Jam! Movies, http://www.canoe.ca/JamMoviesReviewsR/Radiance_kirkland.html
Pomeranz, Margaret, 1998, Radiance, reviewed by Margaret Pomeranz, The Movie Show, http://www.sbs.com.au/movieshow/REVIEWS/R/Radiance.html
Luminous Deborah a star at QUT, QUT Academy of the Arts News, 1998, http://www.academy.qut.edu.au/news/Mailman.htm
The Hamptons.com, 1998, Radiance, http://thehamptons.com/film/festival98/world/Radiance.html
Williams, Evan, 1998, Review: Radiance, Australian News Archive (Arts and Entertainment), http://archive.entertainment.news.com.au/film/81010a.htm
Zubic, Milan, Phillips, Richard, 1998, Unhelpful praise for an imperfect film, World Socialist Web Site, http://wsws.org/arts/1998/rad-all.shtml